He bent grimly over the controls, in his mind a vision of a great host of alien creatures rushing toward him through the forest, swarming over the ship, refusing to let him emerge.

He feared their weapons, which he had never seen. He remembered the little statue with its suicidal impulses, and its ability to shed force-shell replicas of itself.

The ship thrummed as it swept downward, the lights in the control room blinking on and off. Lower it swept and lower. The blood was pounding in Langford's temples when a black-rimmed funnel of swirling brightness yawned suddenly before the viewport. The same instant the cushioning pressure of the anti-gravity jets made itself felt, holding the ship suspended above the roof of the forest until its atomotors ceased to throb.

The ship descended under its own weight amidst a slowly dissolving pressure field. Sweeping down between the fire-blackened trees, it circled slowly about and settled to rest on the soggy forest floor.

When Langford and Joan emerged a warm breeze, laden with jungle scents, swept toward them. They stood for an instant close to the air-lock, staring about them.

No sound broke the stillness except the insistent hum of insects and the rustling of the vegetation on both sides of the ship. A few yards from where they were standing the ground sloped to the brown waters of a swift-running river, its surface flecked with white foam, and studded with little whirlpools that swirled with a darkly writhing turmoil as dry leaves fluttered down, twisting and turning in the breeze.

Twisting and turning above a limp form that lay sprawled on the riverbank, its bare shoulders horribly hunched, its head immersed in the muddy brown water.

Joan screamed when she saw it.

She broke from Langford's restraining clasp and went stumbling forward until she was knee-deep in the swirling current. She was stooping and tugging in desperation at the half-submerged figure when Langford's hand closed on her shoulder.

"Let me handle this," he said, firmly; "it's no job for a woman."

On the bank Joan swung about to face him. "It's a job for a mutant!" she protested, her lips shaking. "You don't know how close he is to death. He's still breathing, but if we don't get him out—"

She broke off abruptly when she saw that Langford needed 

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